The Cosmological Argument

Why does anything exist at all? Does the universe have an explanation for its existence, or is the universe just a brute fact? Is an infinite regress possible? What’s the theological significance of the Big Bang? Does God need explanation? Can science confirm religious ideas?

These questions are addressed by three distinct versions of the cosmological argument:

The kalam cosmological argument

The Thomistic cosmological argument

The Leibnizian cosmological argument

This page provides summaries and links to the best free resources available on the cosmological argument. You may also be interested in our resources on the teleological argument.

What is the Cosmological Argument?

A cosmological argument takes some cosmic feature of the universe – such as the existence of contingent things or the fact of motion – that calls out for an explanation and argues that this feature is to be explained in terms of the activity of a First Cause, which First Cause is God (24).

Here’s how William Lane Craig and James Sinclair describe it (Blackwell, 101):

The cosmological argument is a family of arguments that seek to demonstrate the existence of a Sufficient Reason or First Cause of the existence of the cosmos. The roll of the defenders of this argument reads like a Who’s Who of Western philosophy: Plato, Aristotle, ibn Sina, al-Ghazali, Maimonides, Anselm, Aquinas, Scotus, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Locke, to name but some. Cosmological arguments can be conveniently grouped into three basic types: the kalam cosmological argument for a First Cause of the beginning of the universe; the Thomist cosmological argument for a sustaining Ground of Being of the world; and the Leibnizian cosmological argument for a Sufficient Reason why something exists rather than nothing.

The kalam cosmological argument:

As Shandon Guthrie explains, “The kalam cosmological argument is the product of a history of refined evidence utilizing astronomy and astrophysics to empirically demonstrate that a cause for the universe is necessary if we are to make sense of its existence” (italics added).

The basic form of the argument (Blackwell, 102):

Everything that begins to exist has a cause.

The universe began to exist.

Therefore, the universe has a cause.

Developed versions of the argument:

The Thomistic cosmological argument:

As William Lane Craig explains, “The Thomist cosmological argument is based on the impossibility of an infinite regress of simultaneously operating causes. It seeks a Cause that is First, not in the temporal sense, but in the sense of rank or source.”

Developed versions of the argument:

The Leibnizian cosmological argument:

As William Lane Craig explains, “Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz…posit[ed] the existence of a metaphysically necessary being which carries within itself the sufficient reason for its own existence and which constitutes the sufficient reason for the existence of everything else in the world. Leibniz identified this being as God.”

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